The Esports Highlights of the Week for April 23

Great stuff from local esports this week! The IEM Sydney Qualifiers have wrapped, Australia has new Splatoon champions, Rocket League gave us some brilliant play and the ESL Women's Sydney Open found its four competitors!

Be sure to head over and check out the rest of the esports hub! The Gfinity Elite Series continues to shape out, and it has a release date now too! Remember you can email tips to me esportsau@ign.com or you can just click to send me an email. If you want, you can tweet suggestions at me as well, my twitter is down the bottom of this article.

Splatoon 2 - AUNZ Splatoon 2 Cup

Supanova Melbourne played host to the AUNZ Splatoon 2 Cup over the weekend, and a new champion was crowned — Yeah Nah won the finals 5-0 against their opponents ScarthAce. Last year's champions, the Blue Ringed Octolings, were knocked out just before the finals when they collided with ScarthAce. Yeah Nah will now head to LA to represent Australia at the World Championships in June. Watch below as Yeah Nah snags victory from the jaws of defeat — though they could have bounced back if they'd lost this one anyway.

Counter-Strike GO - Women's Sydney Open Qualifiers

IEM Sydney is a celebration of esports in Australia, but it's a celebration of CSGO first and foremost. And so it's awesome to see ESL Australia putting together an initiative like the Women's Sydney Open, where the best women's CSGO teams in the country will head to IEM to play and compete. The Qualifiers wrapped up on the weekend, and four teams made the cut — Noot Noot, CCC, WinkyFace and LilsUzi.

One of the things I noticed the most in these qualifiers is that some of these players have the mechanics already. The clip I picked, with Hakunaaa popping off, is a great demonstration of the level of skill present here. It will be awesome to see these teams head to IEM and showcase their skills in front of a crowd of CSGO and Esports fans.

Rocket League - Throwdown OCE Championship Playoffs

The OCE Championship Playoffs saw the bottom four of the top six teams from the regular season battling it out — that makes sense right — for one of two spots in the finals. Dark Sided, Tainted Minds, Retirement Home and JAM Gaming clashed in best of seven match-ups. Tainted Minds and Dark Sided made it through — although things were very tight for Tainted Minds, as they nearly fell to Retirement Home. Watch below as TM score two quick goals to keep their Finals dreams alive.

Counter-Strike GO - IEM Sydney AU Qualifiers

Three spots are available for Oceanic region teams at IEM Sydney, and last week the first two had been locked in — Grayhound and the Chiefs. There was a third spot going, and Legacy and Order were the two remaining teams vying for it — Order came out on top, although Legacy showed up on the day.

Grayhound won their seeding match, and IEM released the brackets — it's going to be a tough weekend for the Aussies. Grayhound plays Cloud9, Order plays FaZe Clan and the Chiefs will battle Fnatic. Aussie team Renegades are in the same Group as Order and Grayhound — we might get to see an Aussie Derby if we're lucky. Anyway, watch Sico do what he does below, ripping through Legacy on his way to the Finals.

Hit us up in the comments or on twitter if you think I missed any of the best highlights!

Joab Gilroy is an Australian-based freelancer that specialises in competitive online games and chicken dinner acquisition. You can tweet at him here.